The district, which borders Thane and Mumbai districts, is already experiencing the greatest impact from infrastructure developments like the Vadhavan port near Dahanu and the Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train. In addition to the Mumbai-Vadodara highway
The Mumbai-Vadodara highway, a greenfield project of the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) that connects Vadodara, Gujarat, with Jawaharlal Nehru Port, Raigad district, may result in the widespread destruction of greenery and the felling of over 39,000 trees in the Maharashtra districts of Palghar, Thane, and Raigad. Approximately 32,000 trees have been cut down thus far.
A 166.67-km section of the Mumbai-Vadodara highway will cross Maharashtra, requiring 2,242 hectares of property, including 304 hectares of forest area, according to the NHAI’s response to a Right to Information (RTI) request. 2,100 hectares of land have already been acquired, according to the RTI reply.
In Maharashtra, permission to remove 39,132 trees has been requested and granted; 32,454 trees have already been taken down, with 13,763 of the trees being in forested regions and 18,961 in non-forest areas. In addition, the development plan calls for the demolition of 185 sizable warehouses, 48 religious buildings, and 3,086 residential and commercial buildings. The Mumbai-Delhi expressway includes the Mumbai-Vadodara project.
In addition to housing a sizable tribal population, the Palghar region boasts a sizable amount of greenery and a wide variety of animals. The district, which borders Thane and Mumbai districts, is already experiencing the greatest impact from infrastructure developments like the Vadhavan port near Dahanu and the Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train. In addition to the Mumbai-Vadodara expressway, the projects will seriously harm the area’s vegetation. Anshumali Srivastava, the chief general manager of NHAI, promised to reforest areas in order to make up for the lost canopy. “The money has already been deposited with the Maharashtra Forest Department,” he declared.
D Stalin, an environmental activist with the NGO Vanshakti, declared that the “unrelenting assault on the state’s forests and virgin landscapes” had to end immediately. “It is impossible to accurately measure the ecological loss and the value of lost habitats,” he declared. Why is it that there must be traffic in, on top of, or beneath every forest? During the construction process, even an underground project has an impact on the surface. Concern over the trauma to wildlife is nonexistent.
There is 86.62 km of highway in Maharashtra that runs from Boramal in Talasari (Palghar district) to Kaner in Vasai, and there are 80.57 km that connect Kaner to Morbe near Panvel (Raigad district). A total of 3,086 houses would be demolished, according to the RTI reply. The largest number, 515 houses in Talasari, will be followed by 462 houses in Bhiwandi, 441 houses in Kalyan, 416 houses in Dahanu, 415 houses in Vasai, 380 houses in Ambernath, 361 houses in Palghar, 90 houses in Wada, and six houses in Panvel. Among these are a few structures in the Vasai neighborhood.
There will be the demolition of fourteen religious structures in Dahanu, twelve in Talasari, nine in Palghar, and six in each of Vasai, Bhiwandi, and Ambernath. In addition, there are a lot of godowns and warehouses in the hinterland; there are 185 of them in the highway corridor, with 54 of them in Ambernath and 58 in Bhiwandi.
The Union Transport Ministry has insisted that when the project is finished, the volume of containers traveling over the Mumbai-Ahmedabad highway to reach JNPA will decrease. Numerous of these lorries frequently congest Thane City’s roadways as well as the Mumbai–Nashik expressway. Additionally, the NHAI is building a tunnel beneath Matheran Hill Station to link to the largest cargo port in Maharashtra, JNPA.
The chief general manager of NHAI, Anshumali Shrivastava, stated that the Maharashtra length would be completed by May 2025. By March 2025, the 3.5-kilometer tunnel beneath Matheran will be completed. “The entire Maharashtra stretch will be made of concrete and have eight lanes,” the speaker declared. “We will space out wayside conveniences like gas stations and restaurants every 50 kilometers.”
